


The way you shine like truth in all you do

by THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE



Series: Step Out and Face the Sunshine [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Shadow Campaign - Django Wexler, The Shadow Campaigns (Django Wexler)
Genre: Buffy! AU, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, Swearing, Underage bc they're 17 here although nothing sexual happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE/pseuds/THE_EVIL_CLIFFIE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yeah, okay, Jane might have a habit of acting before thinking things through. Sometimes that's bad. Sometimes it's really bad. And sometimes, like now, it works out all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The way you shine like truth in all you do

**Author's Note:**

> First work in the Happy Trash Buffy AU. Leave your Sensible Storylines and your Proper Drama at the door, please. Title from Frank Turner.

 

“What the hell is that?”

Jane grinned and looked over her shoulder. The townhouse Janus had bought with whatever-the-hell funds he had from the Watchers’ Council and being a fucking _aristocrat_  had a wide portico with a small flight of steps leading up to a smart red door that someone presumably had to work quite hard to keep clean what with it fronting onto a main road. 

It was all very Victorian, and currently Winter was standing in the open doorway, shock on her face and her hands clutched around the strap of her satchel.

“It’s a motorbike,” said Jane, savouring the word.

“I can see that,” said Winter.

“It’s  _my_  motorbike.”

Winter laughed, a little breathlessly. Jane had come to think of it as her ‘my-girlfriend-is-doing-something-stupid-but-not-life-threatening’ laugh, and she’d decided early on that she wanted to make Winter do it as much as possible.

“How did you afford it?” Winter asked, descending the steps and walking over. The autumn breeze, still warm with the last of August’s fire, ruffled her hair as she moved. When Jane had met her it’d been back-length and permanently up in a prim bun; now it was a short, messy, ruffled mop that flopped about whenever she moved.

It suited her far better than the bun had.

“Remember those clockwork eggs we found in that Penitent hideout?” Jane asked.

Winter automatically pressed a hand to her belly.

“I don’t think I’m likely to forget,” she said, her voice somewhere between rueful and amused. Jane banished the sudden spectre of Winter’s blood on her hands, her gasp as that wanker Ionkovo had slipped out of the shadows, a length of silvered steel in his hands.

“Right,” said Jane. “Well, Sothe sold them and gave everyone an equal share, right? Mine went into my account today. Yours should be there too.”

Winter shook her head in what Jane thought might be wonderment.

“I honestly hadn’t thought about it. How much was it?”

“Just over two grand,” said Jane, as casually as she could. Her parents were pretty well-off as these things went, but two thousand pounds was more money than she’d ever had in her life.

Winter frowned.

“Two thousand isn’t enough to buy a motorbike, though, is it?”

“Depends on where you look,” Jane replied. “Got this off a bloke over in Chandler’s Ford. Said he didn’t want it anymore and could I please take it off his hands. So now it’s mine.”

She patted the bike fondly. The paintwork had been bright red whenever the bike had been made, but it had now faded to a rust colour that Jane hoped was just paint and not the metalwork underneath. The leather seat was old and worn, but still comfortable. She’d had just enough money left over for a full set of biking leathers and a helmet.

She’d probably have to get a job to keep it in fuel, but for now it had an almost-full tank and she’d always made it a point not to think too far into the future.

“Do you even have a motorcycle licence?” Winter asked, doing a slow circle of the bike, her head cocked to one side.

“Yep,” Jane said. “Dad’s brother’s in the Marines. Mum and Dad had to go to a wedding or something last year and I wasn’t invited, so Adrian took me on an intensive bike training course.” She grinned at the memory. “You should’ve  _seen_ Mum’s face when she found out. She went bright red, like a tomato.”

Winter giggled, and stepped up close to Jane, her lower lip between her teeth.

“So will I get to ride along?” she asked, a teasing grin starting to spread across her face. “Or do I just watch you crash from the sidelines?”

“I’ll have you know I do everything I do with the utmost competence, Ihernglass,” Jane said, and she managed to go a whole five seconds after Winter raised a platinum-blonde eyebrow before bursting into laughter.

Winter laughed too, head thrown back, and the evening sun caught on her hair and made her look like she had a halo. She couldn’t have looked less like the quiet, closed-in girl Jane had met for the second time almost a year ago, timid in her movements and hunched in on herself like she was scared the world would give her a scolding. She put a hand on Jane’s gloved one, her fingers folding over her hand and the handlebar, and her brilliant blue eyes met Jane’s.

Jane kissed her, her free hand tangling in Winter’s hair. Winter kissed back, slow and careless, smiling into Jane’s lips. One of Winter’s arms snaked around Jane’s neck.

Eventually, they had to come up for air. Winter rested her forehead against Jane’s, a small smile on her lips. Early on, Jane had taken to cataloguing Winter’s smiles, if only because they were so rare; she’d come to think of this one as the “I-have-managed-to-forget-everything-else-for-a-moment” smile. Now, Winter smiled as easily as breathing, but Jane still watched them all, and hoarded the memories like treasure.

“You coming to the meeting?” Winter asked quietly, after the moment passed.

“I’ll run this back home and be along,” Jane said. “I just wanted to show it to you.”

“If you thought a pretty girl on a flashy bike would be enough to turn my head, Jane…” Winter began, the little smile still in place.

“I’d be entirely right?” Jane said, flashing her own grin.

“Well, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it?” Winter said, teasing. Jane chuckled.

“I’d best be off,” she said after another long moment, coiling her ponytail back inside the collar of her jacket. Jane a year ago would’ve sworn she’d keep her short hair forever, had taken it as a statement of identity:  _here, I’m me, this is who I am, I’m not your perfect daughter._ Jane a year ago hadn’t met Winter Ihernglass for the second time; Jane a year ago hadn’t realised that there were a thousand ways to be you, and the best way of all was to realise that they were all right, because you were always you. And Winter had said she’d like running her hands through Jane’s hair.

She turned the key in the bike’s ignition and turned the handlebar, revving the engine up. It rose to a throaty roar, spewed a great volume of petrol-fume out the exhaust…

… then sputtered and died.

There was a moment of silence before Jane heard Winter roar with laughter. She tried the engine again, with the same result. Winter was bent double, her shoulders shaking with mirth.

“Hey, this isn’t funny!” Jane said, banging the side of the engine housing with the flat of her hand.

“On the contrary,” Winter managed between her hysterics, “It’s  _hilarious_.”

“It’s an old bike,” Jane said, feeling defensive. “It’s not supposed to be perfect.”

She tried the engine again. This time it didn’t even turn over. She rattled the ignition back and forth. Silence.

“That’s probably,” Winter gasped, “ _why_  it was so cheap in the first place.”

“You really aren’t helping, Winter,” Jane said, frowning. This only appeared to make Winter laugh harder.

“You spent most of your weird magical clockwork egg money,” Winter said after her laughter had subsided, “on an old bike that doesn’t start.”

“It started fine in his barn!” Jane cried, giving it another hard blow with her hand. It sat there, doing nothing. She sighed and climbed off it. “What were you going to spend yours on?”

“Dunno,” Winter said. “Save it, probably. Janus suggested some premium bonds.”

“That’s entirely the sort of sensible, forward-thinking thing I’d expect of you, Winter,” Jane muttered, kicking the bike’s wheel.

“Because I’m capable of thinking more than five minutes ahead?” Winter asked, grinning.

“Hey, that’s not fair,” Jane replied. “I have been known to think up to three hours in advance, on occasion.”

“Only under duress,” Winter shot back, then laid a kiss on Jane’s cheek. “Not that I mind,” she said softly into Jane’s ear. “I like a bit of spontaneity.”

“If that word means what I think it means, that’s a filthy lie,” said Jane. Winter tilted her head in thought.

“Okay, yeah. It is. But I like you, so I kinda have to like it.” She looked at the bike. “Come on, if we get this into the yard around the back we can put a tarpaulin over it and you can pick it up later.”

“I’ll have to fix it up,” Jane said, disengaging the brake and moving the handlebars so Winter could push it up onto the kerb. She did it without any apparent effort; months of training had given her distractingly good muscles in addition to Slayer strength.

“Do you know how to fix a bike?” Winter asked, grunting a bit as the bike rolled towards the passage down the side of the house.

“I’m sure I can learn,” Jane said. “You can help me. I’ll need someone with strong arms.”

Winter didn’t reply until they had the bike stowed properly under a tarp.

“I have strong arms, do I?” she asked, half-smiling.

“And clever fingers,” Jane said, grinning as wickedly as she could. Winter went bright red, showing up the pale freckles across her cheeks. Jane took two steps forward and kissed her again, long and thorough.

“We need to go,” Winter murmured after their lips parted. “Don’t wanna be late.”

“Well, my ride won’t start,” Jane said, playfully. “Can I walk with you?”

“Of course,” Winter said, kissed her lightly on the lips, and threaded her fingers through Jane’s. “Come on.”

Jane followed Winter out of the house and up the main street, up towards the public library and the little reading room Janus had made his sanctum for Important Watcher Business Meetings. The breeze blew at their backs, bringing with it the smells of the river and of twilight; water and moss and beer and baking bread. 

Jane swung their joined hands a little, and for a time forgot about vampires and demons and weird cultish fuckers in black masks and a world she’d never known existed, and let her world narrow to the spring in her step, the hand in hers, and Winter at her side.


End file.
